When the amount of oil being pumped around the world maxes out sometime in the next 30 years or so (see main text), we will need an alternative to tens of millions of barrels of oil per day. At an October workshop sponsored by the US National Academies, though, experts on the leading alternatives made plain that even all the practicable substitutes combined won't be ready in 25 years to make up for a major shortfall.
Heavy Oil - Some crude oil is too viscous to flow easily into a well on its own. Typically, pumping in steam "converts peanut butter into ketchup," said Robert Heinemann of Berry Petroleum Co. of Bakersfield, California. Currently, about 3 million barrels of heavy oil are produced per day. If the price is right, Heinelmann said, heavy oil production might double in the next 10 years.
Oil sands - In Alberta, Canada, humongous steam shovels gouge out 100 tons of oily sand from the land at a time, eventually yielding 50 barrels of oil per shovelful. Steam injected into deep oil sand beds can also free up the oil for pumping. But the arduous and environmentally challenging extraction of oil from sand means that despite Alberta's abundant sands, only 3 million barrels per day may be produced in 2020, said Eddy Isaacs of the Alberta Energy Research Institute in Calgary.
Coal - Yes, coal could fuel your car. Friedrich Bergius proposed the first process for converting coal's big, heavy organic molecules into short chains of carbon and hydrogen in 1912. Germany fueled its Luftwaffe from coal during World War II. But David Gray of Mitretec Systems in Falls Church, Virginia guessed that it would take oil prices consistently above $50 per barrel to get production from coal up to 4 million barrels per day by 2030.
Natural Gas - Trucks and buses already run on natural gas, but to ease international transportation of gas and to concentrate its energy, its single carbon molecules can be chemically joined o form long-chain hydrocarbons, mostly a diesel like product. ExxonMobil is helping build a gas-to-liquids plant in the Persian Gulf nation of Qatar, Emil Jacobs of ExxonMobil in Annandale, New Jersey, said at the workshop. No other site has yet proven commercially viable. When pressed, Jacobs allowed that gas to liquids might yield half a million barrels of oil per day by 2015.
Conservation - John Heywood of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge noted that efficiency increases for US cars have been entirely countered in the marketplace by the American predilection for bigger, heavier cars. And major steps up in efficiency with clean diesel engines and hybrids will take 30 years to have a substantial effect, he said, even under optimistic assumptions. Smaller cars will have to be in the mix, he concluded.
Nonstarters - Some energy sources will be of little or no use when the peak comes. Nuclear, wind, and solar do not produce liquid fuels. Liquids such as ethanol from biomass are not yet firmly economic. Oil from organic-rich shale won't be commercial for a decade or two, if then. Hydrogen for fuel cells would likely take half a century to have a substantial effect.
